by Richard Watkins
1998 began for me, at least the conscious part of me, with a phone call from my friend in New Jersey at about 6:30am. For many that would be nothing to write about, but I live in Queensland, Australia, and my universe was starting to get a little weird. I was in the middle of summer; she was in the middle of winter. I was in Thursday morning; she was in Wednesday evening. That much I could handle reasonably well. It was when I got onto me in January, she December, then me 1998, she 1997 that the weirdness gauge hit the redline. We were having a rational conversation, both from a completely different here and now. Some of the immutable aspects of time and space I had accepted since I was a kid just became more mutable than they had been.
But isn’t life like that? We are all in our own here and now. Often we can find others who will confirm that this is here and now, but we forget that we could be talking to someone in a different, but equally as valid, here and now. If it can happen with the seasons and years, couldn’t it also happen on something more nebulous, like belief systems?
After breakfast I was feeling a little less weird and headed out cruising in the countryside on my motorbike. Destination: down the road. Expected duration: until I got back.
Over the previous week I had been working my way through the ReSurfacing Audio Workshop, concentrating especially on freeing attention and being here and now. I was trying to readjust to normal city life after a few months’ working in a small, isolated town near the top of Cape York. Getting back to Brisbane just before Christmas, with all the pre-holiday chaos, had just about tripped all my circuit breakers.
Somewhere on my motorbike cruise, winding through hills with alternating subtropical forests and farms, feeling the sun on my jeans and the wind on my face, a big aha! hit me.
Most adults in western society drive in cars. It is the default mode of transport adopted without too much exercise of deliberate decision. My car has an automatic transmission, power brakes and steering, cruise control, air conditioning, an AM-FM radio cassette and a 10-stack CD player. It makes long trips very easy and pleasant. I can drive for hours and arrive wondering what there was along the road, not really having noticed anything. I have been in my own private here and now.
My motorbike is noisy, vibrates, has a clutch, gears, two unassisted brakes (front and rear) and needs more maintenance than the car. There is no air conditioning, no CD player, and no roof to keep the sun or rain off. It is potentially unstable and offers no protection in the event of an impact, but I love it.
When I am cruising on the bike I feel a part of the environment that I am travelling through. In the car it is like watching the world go by on a big screen.
On the bike my attention is outward, to the broader here and now. It is the road surface, line through the bend, throttle off, brake, change gear, lean, throttle on, change gear. It is hills, streams, bridges, potholes, trees, cows, sun, wind and rain. Fixed attention is released. After the ride, I return more relaxed and expansive. A two-wheeled ReSurfacing Workshop.
Most people drive a car to reach a destination; the journey is incidental. It seems to me that most people go through life that way—disregarding most of what is around them, intent only on reaching their goals. Motorcycle cruising is about the journey. The destination is really incidental. It is what is at the end of the route you have chosen to take. That reminds me of the way of Avatar—choosing what route to take, then enjoying the journey, both the sun and rain.Richard Watkins, Australia
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